The Truth Bomb

Daylight savings time and I got off to a rocky start when I showed up to work one hour early on Monday morning and walked in on Bill wearing nothing but his boxers (I was going by the clock on my oven. Which, as SNL's Seth Meyers wisely said, "Will be wrong for the next six months." Preach!). But last night, I was singing a different tune.

It was a warm, sunny day in New York, and when I left work at six to meet Justin for a drink, it was still light out. This filled me with so much hope and joy that I gave money to three separate panhandlers on the subway, all the while ignoring my mother's voice in the back of my head, saying, "They'll only use that to buy their crack pills." Yes mom, their crack pills.

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Justin had texted me earlier in the day, asking if I wanted to meet for a drink after work. When I agreed, he wrote back. "I've missed you." That, combined with the gloriousness of the day, was giving me a feeling that things were going to go my way.

When I arrived, Justin was already seated at a table in the corner of the wine bar. He stood and gave me a kiss on the cheek. It felt formal, stiff. That good feeling wavered.

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We sat down and the waiter came by to take our order.

Justin ordered a rosé while I quickly scanned the wine list.

"You know what, I'll have rosé too," I said.

"I thought you hated rosé," Justin said.

"I don't hate it. It's just not my go-to."

"You'll like it. It's refreshing."

I nodded. It was so clear we were both stalling. "Can we just get to it?" I asked.

Justin exhaled a shaky breath. Why was he so nervous?

"Okay." Justin took a sip of water. "I have to start by saying that I haven't been totally honest with you."

That good feeling I had earlier? It was now sitting at the bar, swigging Merlot, and laughing at me for being such an optimistic fool.

"Okayyy," I said. "What haven't you been honest with me about?"

The waiter arrived with our drinks. He took his sweet-ass time assembling the coasters and cocktail napkins on the table, and it took all my strength not to grab the glasses off his tray and shoo him away.

Thirty torturous seconds later, we were alone again.

"It's not anything like I've been seeing another girl or I was once convicted of armed robbery," Justin said.

"For the love of God, just tell me," I said.

"Okay, okay." Justin said. "I never know how to bring this up, like when it's appropriate or whatever, so I'm sorry I'm bad at this." He took a deep breath. "I can't have children. Because of the chemo. I know you aren't thinking about having children any time soon…I mean, I think you aren't thinking that. I hope you aren't thinking that. But, I feel I owe that information to anyone I'm going to get into a relationship with."

I was stunned into silence. Some obnoxiously drunk woman started cackling behind me. I waited for her to get it all out before I said, "That was not what I was expecting."

"Better or worse than me seeing another girl or being convicted of armed robbery?"

"Better," I said, without missing a beat.

"Really?" Justin asked. "Most girls, this is a major dealbreaker for them."

"I've honestly never had that like, urge to have children," I said. "I think I might have one, some time, somehow. But it's really not high on my priority list, and especially not now."

"I mean, I do want kids," Justin said. "I'll just have to explore other options."

"And this is because of chemo?" I asked.

"There's always a chance it can leave you sterilized," Justin said, looking down at his hands. "I preserved some of my swimmers before the treatments began, but the facility accidentally destroyed them."

I covered my mouth with my hand. "That's horrible. You could sue."

Justin shrugged. "I could. But after everything was over, I just wanted to focus on the happy things in life. I didn't want to be angry."

"I can understand that," I said. We sipped our wine, in silence, for a little bit. "So what does this mean in terms of us?"

Justin reached out and took my hand. "I don't want to stop seeing you. I just didn't want to"—he let go of my hand to make air quotes—"''make this official' before first making sure you were okay with this."

"So you're okay with making this," I used my own air quotes, "official?"

"I'm not okay with losing you, so yes."

Justin took my hand again and squeezed it. If it had been a scene in a romantic comedy, the chorus from that Flo Rida song would have started playing right then and there: "Ohhhh, sometimessss, I get it a good feeling."

We finished up our wine and then my boyfriend and I headed back to my place. Even though he was afraid to reveal this information to me, I still think everything Justin said about not wanting things to change, in terms of my expectations of how much time and energy he needs to "give" me, holds true. I'm touched Justin opened up to me the way he did, and I'm also excited to show him that not all girlfriends turn into stage five clingers.